Stoker’s text draws a distinct comparison between the English and Count Dracula as foreign invaders. Jonathan Harker’s journey to Transylvania in the beginning of the text shows how an Englishman views seemingly inferior countries. He complains about several trivial matters, such as how the trains are not as punctual as trains in England. Stephen Arata points out several parts of Dracula that depict Jonathan Harker as out of his element when travelling to Transylvania. “Not only does he continue to gripe about the trains, he also searches for quaint hotels (p. 12), samples the native cuisine (p. 10), ogles the indigenous folk (p. 11), marvels at the breathtaking scenery (p. 11), wonders at local customs (p. 15), and, interspersed throughout, provides pertinent facts about the region’s geography history, and population” (636). All of this helps to establish Harker as a sort of clueless, innocent tourist in a foreign country that he does not truly understand or identify with. However, the country does not start to negatively affect Jonathan Harker until he meets Count Dracula. Once Harker finds himself as a prisoner to Count Dracula several affinities are drawn between the two. Stephen Arata notes several of these direct comparisons present within the text. “Dracula twice dons Harker’s clothes to leave the Castle (pp. 59, 64). Since on both occasions the Count’s mission is to plunder the town, we are encouraged to see a correspondence between the vampire’s actions and those of the travelling Westerner” (638). The Transylvanian townspeople immediately assume that the visiting Englishman, Jonathan Harker, committed the atrocious crimes. In fact, one peasant mother directs her outward cry, “Monster, give me my child!” (Stoker 53), at Harker with the belief that he is truly the monster. Jonathan Harker is the foreigner in this case, but more specifically he is English, and therefore seen as a foreign invader and a threat. This weakens the imperial views of Britain as it compares a monster to an Englishman. Transylvanians feel just as afraid of Jonathan Harker as they are of Dracula. The negative scrutiny and concerns of the monstrous Dracula relate even to the British and their imperialistic ideals.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula epistolary literary technique helped develop an authenticity that directly impacted imperialism and drew a distressing relationship to the Whitechapel Murders. Stoker chose to tell the story entirely through letters, diaries, journals, and newspapers to develop a more realistic environment. It helps to engage the reader on a more personal level with the journals as well as contribute to the legitimacy of the story through a public perspective outside of the main characters through newspapers. Periodicals were familiar to the average reader during the Victorian era and thus increased the threat felt by English citizens. The realism technique resonates well with the average English citizen and invokes paranoia. Stoker wanted this novel to appear as factual to some audiences:
Finally, Stoker attempts to place his narrative within an actual historical context. Referring to Dracula’s demonic London transactions, he writes: ‘I state again that this mysterious tragedy which is here described is completely true in all its external respects, though naturally I have reached a different conclusion on certain points than those involved in the story. But the events are incontrovertible, and so many people know of them that they cannot be denied. This series of crimes has not yet passed from the memory – a series of crimes which appear to have originated from the same source, and which at the time created as much repugnance in people everywhere as the notorious murders of Jack the Ripper’ (Davison 148).
This claim by Bram Stoker shows how he intended for his story to deliver the same trepidation and angst as Jack the Ripper. The horrendous mutilations still freshly resided in the minds of English society and the clear similarity between the text and the Ripper incident caused massive concern about the decline of civilization.
Many theories behind the identity of Jack the Ripper pointed to people of the Jewish community. Jewish immigration brought forth numerous anxieties in England during the late nineteenth century according to Carol Davison. “What I call the cabalistic backdrop of early Gothic fiction ….was grounded in the fear of a social apocalypse like the French Revolution occurring in Britain. Many believed that such a cataclysm would be the result of politically subversive secret societies operated by avaricious Jews advancing their own socio-economic interests to the detriment of British ‘progress’” (152). The apprehension that Jack the Ripper served as part of an invading Jewish force could only be enhanced by the anti-Christian, seemingly Jewish, Dracula brutally colonizing England in Stoker’s text. According to Davison, Dracula embodies many of the stereotypical Jewish traits. Dracula cannot come into contact with Christian holy objects such as a crucifix or holy wafer. Davison also comments that Dracula’s appearance, with a hooked nose and Jewish styled facial hair, indicates his Judaism. Jack the Ripper had brought England to its knees much like Dracula, and people panicked that soon their impressive empire would fall victim to foreign incursion. Stoker wanted his text to emphasize the severity of foreign invasion as equally important and real as Jack the Ripper. Kathleen Spencer claims the characters’ reactions in Dracula reinforce this feeling of verity, “For example, when Dracula appears in Picadilly at high noon, the characters react initially with disbelief and a kind of horrified vertigo at discovering that the monstrous is real and walking the streets of their ordinary modern city” (Spencer 199). The characters in the text find difficulty in accepting the flaws of London. They cannot believe that something evil could ever reside in the empire. This panic of outsiders weakens imperialism and challenges authority.
“Shooting an Elephant” contains several symbolic elements that represent the malady of imperialism. “Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’: Reflections of Imperialism and Neoimperialism” by Mohammed Sarwar Alam points out several of these elements and makes note of their importance to the story’s theme. “In this essay, the elephant and the British officer help to prove that imperialism is a double –edge sword. The shooting of the elephant is the incident that reveals that imperialism inflicts damage on both parties in imperialistic relationships” (56). This factor showed the British society that colonization had negative effects as well. These negative outcomes affect not only the people being colonized, but the British people who are part of the colonization process. The British officer, the narrator, often feels like a puppet to imperialism. In order to enforce the institution of imperialism, the narrator loses his freedom. This stands as a complete shock as imperialism typically views the colonized people with a loss of freedom rather than the Empire’s people. Alam remarks on the incident where the British officer shoots the elephant, and mentions how it represents his loss of liberty:
When he killed the animal he joined ranks with the imperialists as he was acting unnaturally to appease the natives. The fact of the Burmese deciding what the narrator, a white man must do, creates the irony of master becoming slave to fulfill his racial and imperial obligations. The British felt that they had control over the Burmans but rather the Burmans unwittingly had control over the British. This raises an important question- if a good man can be corrupted and destroyed by imperialism, then what could it do to others who are not so principled? (56).
This depiction places the Burmese people in control of the British oppressors rather than the typical outlook. The British officer preferred not to kill the elephant and yet he really had no choice in the matter. The expectation of the colonized people surrounding him necessitated his compliance in order to uphold his position as an officer of the imperial nation. Alam brings into question the fact that the narrator seemed more principled than most British oppressors and yet still fell prey to the corrupting power of imperialism. Therefore, it could be derived that a less ethical person could exploit and abuse the power of their position. Instead of unwillingly killing the elephant in order to maintain appearance, a corrupt individual could commit more malevolent acts for sheer pleasure. This story also shows that despite the typical British view of the time, which thought that these countries wanted to be “improved” through colonization, the Burmese truly ostracized the colonization of their country and suppression of their independence.
English authority is often contested and complicated throughout Dracula. English held the supreme authority in the nineteenth century, and yet the characters in the text often find themselves without when facing Dracula. In the case of Jonathan Harker in the beginning of the text, Dracula demonstrated numerous times that he held the ultimate authority over Jonathan’s head. He decided the content of letters sent out by Jonathan, stole his clothes on numerous occasions, and revealed that Jonathan no longer possessed the freedom to come and go as he pleased. Instead, Dracula decided where Harker could go and held him prisoner in the castle. Dracula also exhibited his power sexually in the case of Lucy and Mina. By conquering the English women, he would eventually enslave the men. Kathleen Spencer suggests that Bram Stoker’s Dracula contains some of Stoker’s ideals about England:
The outcome of the novel suggests Stoker was arguing that the solution to the late Victorian crisis lay in privileging society over sex, that in order to preserve the nation it was necessary to sacrifice some degree of personal freedom. That would explain the novel's insistent pattern of the many against the one, the community against the scapegoat; it might also help explain the novel's popularity at a time of imperialist fervor concealing deep anxieties about the future of the empire (219).
Stoker intended to provide the English populace with a solution to maintain English authority. The plot brings forth the idea that community and society must take precedence much like the group that came together to fight Dracula. The group in the text included one Christian foreigner from the Eastern Hemisphere, Abraham Van Helsing; one Christian foreigner from the Western Hemisphere, Quincy Morris; and one New Woman, Mina Harker. Each of these members represented a class that could have been seen as a threat to the principles of imperial authority. Stoker’s decision to bring these three into the group as peers and invaluable members suggests that he wanted England to embrace them into society rather than fear and reject them. These two foreigners are acceptable because of their similar interests and beliefs. However, the foreign Dracula is rejected because of his hostile ambitions and incongruous values. At the end of the novel, conflict of empire is resolved with the death of Dracula. In a collaborative effort from English Jonathan Harker, and American Quincy Morris, the two manage to end Dracula’s reign of terror. In the end, Jonathan Harker’s note reveals that life in London has returned to normal. Mina Harker has taken on her maternal role as an Angel of the house, and anxiety from the foreign conqueror’s influence has extinguished.
Count Dracula, as a foreign invader from barbaric Eastern Europe and viewed as a parasitic Jewish immigrant, as well as the British officer representing an imperial officer enforcing Empire influence, both conceptualize the critical components in the rich collection of the fin-de-siècle trepidations. London feared foreign invasion and possible revolution threatened their imperial nation. Orwell’s “Shooting an Elephant” showed that even while spreading their imperial influence the British were still losing their freedom. It stood as a reflection to the British civilization that colonization did not produce merely beneficial outcomes. Stoker’s Dracula displayed the horror of an alien might consuming the countries inhabitants and eventually leading to the decline of the nation. The text compared Dracula to the terrifying Whitechapel Murders and drew associations to hypotheses of Jack the Ripper’s Jewish decent. The implication that Dracula shared Jewish traits further connected the two incidents and amplified apprehensions that the empire faced peril. “Shooting an Elephant” disputes British power in numerous ways. It shows that foreign countries do not actually want to be colonized. It also confronts the notion that the imperialists lose their freedom while attempting to take over. A loss of freedom would have truly shocked and appalled the British of the Victorian era. Dracula challenges English authority numerous times but eventually leads to a resolution. However, the price of the resolve comes with the trust and assistance of foreign aid. The novel concludes with Dracula’s death by the group, including the two foreigners, and eventually returns England back to normal. “Shooting an Elephant” resolves with the British officer surrendering his freedom to save face before the colonized Burmese people. Yet this resolution shows the weakness of imperialism and England’s inability to conquer its own problems due to the necessary foreign aid. Concern about the descent of English imperialism and the unfavorable effects of foreign colonization profusely inhabit Bram Stoker’s Dracula. The concepts in these novels influenced people of the nineteenth century to believe in the decline of their imperial empire. This would have caused them to pay closer attention to the real world events occurring in London during this time period. Any possible link to degeneration within their powerful society could spark panic and pandemonium.
Works Cited
Alam, Mohammed Sarwar. “Orwell’s ‘Shooting an Elephant’: Reflections on Imperialism and Neoimperialism.” IIUC Studies. Vol 3. (December 2006): 55-62. Print.
Arata, Stephen. “The Occidental Tourist: Dracula and the Anxiety of Reverse Colonization.” Victorian Studies 33.4 (1990): 621-645. Print.
Davison, Carol M. “Blood Brothers: Dracula and Jack the Ripper.” Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Sucking Through the Century 1897-1997. Ed Carol M Davison. Toronto: Dundurn P, 1997): 147-175. Print.
Orwell, George. “Shooting an Elephant.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol F. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt et al. New York: Norton, 2006. 2379-2384. Print.
Spencer, Kathleen L. "Purity and Danger: Dracula, the Urban Gothic, and the Late Victorian Degeneracy Crisis." ELH 59.1 (Spring 1992): 197-225. Print.
Stoker, Bram. Dracula. Penguin Putnam Inc. 2003. Print.
